Tis the season to be jolly

All in all, a most excellent Christmas.

Harmony reigned, driven mainly by the fact that Granma finally realised that Felix (a) exists and (b) is a fantastic little boy, so she shared her time with the kids (not sure Felix gave her much choice) and that made Babymomma relax her clenched jaw and put the gritted teeth away.

The kids simply love being at home with Mummy, Daddy and the Grandmothers so they are both on good form. Felix is doing holiday rules, which basically means refusing to go to bed until about 9pm. Jasmine is demonstrating she can ride a bicycle, on the flat, with stabilisers, for about 1 minute before she stops pedalling. But it's a great start and she loves it. Babymomma and the bf are simply grateful for the babysitting time which allows us to cook, surf the interweb, have the occasional lie in and see Avatar during the break.

Only thing that has made it slightly less than perfect is that I woke up on Christmas Eve with an acute wry neck which still hasn't gone away and is making me occasionally grumpy but I'll live.

A day off! Hurrah!

A DAY OFF!!! At last. Not that it's really a day "off" what with all the shopping and cleaning and cooking to do. Anyways, dropped kids off, braved the ice death trap that is the road outside nursery, pootled along to the collection office to pick up a "mystery thing" for Felix that turned out to be an enormous card that Grama had sent. Only postage was underpaid by 8p so I had to pay the balance AND a £1 handling charge. Grumble grumble. Grama, incidentally, is arriving today, so lordy knows why she couldn't have just brought it with her. It's not like we've got anything better to do.

Anywayz, got to the supermarket at 8.05am and the car park was jampacked already. Who'da thought? Christmas, in the main, was delivered last night (love Ocado) so I whizzed round doing top up shop and picked up our joint for tomorrow (love Waitrose) just in time to see a lady do a strop because her two turkeys she ordered hadn't been delivered. And whilst she wasn't shouting she was clearly very cross - and who could blame her - and I couldn't help but feel relieved that it hadn't happened to me.

Feeling all Christmas ho ho ho now. Hurrah!

In which babymomma goes out 4 times in a week

Christmas must truly be upon us, as a few opportunities for a knees up came my way. Bf, being fantastic as he is, gave me not one, but two pink passes last week. So I went to Hakkasan for a sophisticated work do and Jongleurs for a work do at the other end of the spectrum in the same week.

Most exciting of all, at the weekend, Nani came up to babysit and bf and I went to a dinner party hosted by my amazing friend Mat. So not only was the food amazing, the company amazing, the conversation amazing, but the news that he is soon to be a daddy simply topped the amazing stakes.

And the next day we went to Alex' 2nd birthday party - 5 kids, 7 grown ups, a whole lot of mess and a totally chilled afternoon.

Bringing the total outings to 4. Oh yes, that's 4 parties in a week.

Which means I probably won't be going out again until I'm, ahem, about 40.

I'm dreaming of a pink Christmas

We just went to the local bike shop and bought Jambeans a gopping pink bicycle with a neon pink furry seat and pink tassles (cheap plastic) coming out of the handlebars. No amount of persuasion could convince her that red, silver or purple were preferable colours. Poor Felix - his face was so full of expectation and excitement. He's going to be gutted when he realises he's not getting one. It must suck being the younger child.

The shorthand version of the longhand version of shitty christmas

I started writing this longhand version of why the run up to Christmas was so shitty, but it's taking forever and time is precious and all that, so the shorthand version is we were all horribly sick most of the time and 2 days before Christmas I lost my job because our company couldn't survive the collapse of the Icelandic bank system and I still don't know if I'm going to get paid this month.

Clearly, there is a lot more to get off my chest, particularly about being unwittingly unemployed in the midst of a deep recession, but we've finally had a good run of form so I'm not going to ruin it by moaning. Christmas Day at Auntie Seema's was most excellent. As was Boxing Day at London Zoo. As was the day after Boxing Day when La Gitane and Krusty came to stay before hopping on a plane back to HK. As was the day after the day after Boxing Day when Richard, Hilary, Danil and Seriosha came for a visit. I've eaten a LOT of cake. It feels good.

shitty christmas

it's been a very long time since i've written anything in the blog. mainly, i've not had the energy. but also, i've struggled to know what to say, or how to say it. but also, there's been a BIG THING i haven't been able to say. a big stressy rubbish shitty thing and it's just inhibited me from saying anything about anything else really. more on that later...

good stuff that happened in the run up to christmas:

1. our washing machine broke but got fixed again. (note where this starts. this is the GOOD things list. and it's CHRISTMAS. this list of the best possible things i can say starts with a washing machine.)
2. it got warmer
3. i spoke at a local council meeting against the proposal to redevelopment the house behind ours into flats, and we got a result: planning permission not granted. babymomma equals skill. many people come up to me after and ask if i am a lawyer (?) - apparently i spoke that well they assume it's a professional skill. babymomma is chuffed ;-)

shitty stuff that happened in the run up to christmas:

friday 19th december:

babymomma wakes up feeling awful. goes to work feeling awful. head-achy-body-achy-nauseous-extra-tired-type-awful. believes it is related to the takeaway curry consumed the night before. spends much of the day with head on desk. attempts to leave work early but gets hit by a deeply shite friday afternoon work crisis. doesn't leave till 5pm. leaves with heavy heart.

on tube near home, babymomma receives message to say jasmine has chicken pox. aaaargh.

saturday 20th december, morning:

jasmine seems ok. bf seems ok. babymomma feels ok-ish. felix has diarrhoea. by the time 9am arrives he has pooed on me once and vomited on me 3 times.

desperate for outing we venture to whipsnade zoo. it's cold and windy. at the penguin pool jasmine has deep panic her hair is 'falling off' and insists on being carried everywhere. poo from jasmine's wellies is smeared all over babymomma. babymomma is haunted by acrid poo smell that no number of baby wipes can erase. (babymomma IS the acrid poo smell no number of wipes can erase). we struggle on regardless. see some giraffes. have lunch. babymomma flakes out. home. coma. boyfried manfully looks after everyone.

saturday 20th december, night time:

jasmine comes into bed with us, upset, uncomfortable and itchy with spots. tosses and turns against me all night = no sleep

sunday 21st december, morning:

Felix is doing early shifts (as in pre-6am) and after our crappy night's sleep bf and I feel like total shit. Jasmine, oddly, is totally well in herself and being an absolute angel. Felix is a bit on and off. No diarrhoea today but he won't eat properly - just wants milk. He seems ok for the best part of the day until we give him a square millimetre of chocolate biscuit and he grabs it and palms it and shoves it in his mouth and giggles and coughs and smiles and jiggles on daddy's lap and then OH MY GOD he does the most enormous vomit everywhere. Bigger than the Witches of Eastwick. Worse than the Exorcist. Not a surface of either daddy or the sofa is spared. Babymomma is too busy drinking tea, eating biscuits and laughing her head off to be of any assistance whatsoever. Bf is agog with disbelief. Felix is smiling innocently and gurgling with satisfaction. Not even a spot of vomit has landed on him anywhere.

Monday 22nd December, wee small hours of the morning.

Middle of night. Babymomma wakes up feeling... a bit weird. Spends the next 7 hours running to the loo every 15 minutes with the most horrendous you can guess what

Monday 22nd December, day.

Bf is feeling queasy, achey, nauseuous too. We bundle Felix to nursery and take it in hour shifts to sleep/look after Jambeans

Tuesday 23rd December

Bf still ill and stays at home. I still feel like shit too, not having had any time to recover from whatever bug crawled up my bottom and died there. Jambeans still covered in spots and in quarantine. Felix still not 100% and still being bundled to nursery. Babymomma's company gives notice to appoint administrators today and I, effectively, lose my job. My supposed career defining move hasn't lasted 3 months. It's 2 days before Christmas. I had known since Friday it was coming but it still feels like shit when I hear the news. When I pick Felix up in the evening I am informed he has had diarrhoea today, and therefore is banned from school tomorrow.

Wed 24th December

Exhausted, sick unemployed babymomma looks after two moaning sick kids. It is Christmas Eve.

Fabulous Feet

So 32 weeks gone and STILL pregnant. It's all going tremendously well.

Our Christmas holiday has been perfect, despite my former Christmas blues. We started off by having Nick, Jessica and Sophie round for a pre-Christmas lunch featuring a fabulous Rick Stein number that, for the first time, made me look like a genuine super chef. The recipe was actually ridiculously easy - the hardest bit was poaching eggs and, true to my usual lazy form, I got the bf to do that.

Christmas Day itself was just Jambeans, boyfried, me and the bump, ie NO OTHER FAMILY, ie heaven on a stick. We loaded J up with presents - one big one and a lot of small ones - which she got to open periodically throughout the day and she spent the whole day in play heaven. Boyfried and I kick started a mammoth run of film and video watching which we've barely just finished, taking in the whole Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings series (Jasmine, for some reason, is fascinated by Gollum - I think she thinks he's a dog) as well as some more recommendable efforts like Wag the Dog and Marathon Man.

The second half of our week off has been particularly fab, most of which I attribute to my last minute pink pass (or should it be blue pass for me?) to the Sanctuary. Bf had given me a voucher for my birthday last year and I only got round to using it on the last possible day it was valid for. When I arrived I was grumpy and anxious and missing out on a visit to London Zoo (only Jasmine's second of the week) and I was still smarting at how much of my £100 voucher just went to the privilege of being able to walk through the door - £77 would you believe - but as soon as I was in and having my deluxe pedicure it all started wafting away. Having started with the crusty, crabby feet of someone "who's let themselves go a bit" I now have fabulous feet, and hands to match, and actually feel like my attractive self again (see picture - that's what I normally look like, honestly). We went round to Pedro and Lax's leaving party - the traitors are disappearing off to Oz for a year - straight after so I even had a venue to shine at.

Felix has been particularly busy this Christmas too - doubtless fuelled by all the extra holiday-season calories I've found room for. He's redoubled his disco dancing efforts and increasingly does these slow, low turns that make you feel like your centre of gravity is dropping to your feet. (Jasmine was a kickboxer - please don't ask me what the difference is. It's just definitely a different kind of kicking.) I've definitely noticed that I feel more tired and need the post lunchtime nap more than Jambeans does, and that I'm a lot more out of breath than usual, which I understand is normal, as my lungs don't have as much space as they're used to. The worst symptoms are itchy, dry, overly sensitive skin which make me very jumpy and crabby to the touch (oooh - but just read this so that seems quite normal too); and the return of the dreaded overgrown flap of gum skin behind my two front teeth which is annoying and making me lisp again.

To cap it all, Arsenal are still top of the Premiership, even though watching them play involves more stress than I am actually capable of bearing in my pregnant condition. Jambeans is turning into a good little Gunner but worryingly Felix seems to come alive when Blackburn are playing. A nice little project for us to work on when he's born methinks.